What's the hot stack for self-hosting headless blog stuff now? Been out of the loop since I started reading about jamstack. Hugo? Gatsby? Is Jekyll still a player here?
My suggestion is to pick a templating engine and markup language you like, wire them together with a bit of glue code, and try not to spend too much time fiddling with it instead of writing. When I do realize there’s some feature I want to add, it’s a lot easier to tweak ~100 lines of code that I’m already familiar with rather than trying to figure out the documentation for some plugin system.
I’ve written about this in a bit more detail previously[1], and I’ve also published the source code to my personal blog[2] if you’re curious to see a fully-baked example.
Personally I made my own static site generator [1][2], which has been a lot of fun, and fairly easy to implement (you just need a solid markdown to html converter, preferrably going further than commonmark standards).
For hosting I use the free tier of Firebase... `Firebase deploy` and Voila. You get not only free hosting but the ability to revert and free around the globe CDN. Pretty darn fast.
I would also roll my own. I've tried several generators and there is always something that doesn't quite work how I want it to and the documentation is often bad and outdated.
When you roll your own not only is it way simpler than existing solutions it won't change from under you. I blog very infrequently and often from different machines or operating systems, the last generator I used had completely changed between posts and I either had to relearn how it worked or make my own.
I followed a similar path. Forked the pug templating language and adapted it for my needs. It's kind of crude at the moment but it's already powering my website.
Emacs org-mode exported to html5 as part of a git post-receive hook for auto-update on repo changes (my stack of choice). Change the html export however you like to fit your deployment. Replace emacs with asciidoc(tor), diagrams-as-code, etc.
Yes, org mode is pure genius. The only issue with org mode is it used to only work well from emacs itself. I use past tense as I've address that issue as an attempt to get more colleague to use org mode when building this: https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash
It takes virtually any org mode document stored anywhere and will expose the org mode export so you can browse the generated pages like a website available as not only a regular html one but also a pdf one with links and all that emacs generate on the fly. Example with a random github repo that have a couple org mode documents:
It's not super fast as it runs emacs everytime you need to render a page and run the export from there but considering the title of this article, it is well within the theme of blogging like a hacker.
I'm almost embarrassed about the number of times I've rebuilt my blog [1] over the past few years, especially given how infrequently I actually write anything.
A non-exhaustive list includes the following SSGs:
- Astro
- Eleventy
- Gatsby
- Hugo (three times)
- Jigsaw
- Lume
- Next.js
I finally settled on Astro. I don't know whether it qualifies as hot stuff, but I'm happy with it.
Regarding Hugo, the Go template language is a little esoteric (or at least very unusual) at times. The final straw, though, was the lack of compatibility with the Tailwind JIT compiler. Apparently it's fixed now, but it took so long that I'd long since moved on.
Astro feels like a really good fit for static content sites. It's easy to understand, and generates very fast sites that don't rely on a tonne of pointless JavaScript (as was the case with both Gatsby and Next when I used them).
My journey has been from jekyll to Hugo to plain HTML.
A blog post can be mostly <h1>, <p>, <b>, and <img> tags. I (mostly) use internal CSS so each post is self contained. Creating a new post is just a copy/paste of the last one and changing the words.
If I wanted a fancy style, I could export one from any template-based theme but I use something minimal. Keeping it simple helps me focus on writing instead of plug-in management and endless tweaking of settings.
In theory I'll run into issues if I want to restyle the entire blog, but I'm happy to preserve old posts as-is. If I wanted to edit a header or footer I could use bulk search/replace.
Occasionally I've wanted to add some extra interactivity or a one-off style. This is straightforward in HTML (assuming you know it) versus a generator that can get in your way with too many layers of abstraction.
No idea. I just use Wordpress - it increases the chance (which is very low) that I will write something and actually publish it, and for that thing not to be a meta "how I set up my blog this time".
I like Hugo. It's been a gateway drug into building much more interesting and broadly useful websites than just a blog for me, the same way WordPress was a gateway drug for today's PHP devs. Giving you RSS feeds out of the box is a lovely bonus.
Most recently I used Hugo to create a backup archive of the Finnish broadcast news, plus translations, which was all in all very easy thanks to its i18n support: https://hiandrewquinn.github.io/selkouutiset-archive/
Hugo also works well with Git submodules, if you want an excuse to learn how those work in more depth. I generally keep one submodule for just the content of my sites themselves, and another one for the theme. A third repo actually brings the two submodules together into a full fledged site.
I even gave a presentation at the local university to first year CS students who wanted to get Hugo up and running. It was a big success!
I am no expert, but I am in the process of transitioning over to NextJS. Reason being it's quite opinionated on how to structure your app / blog and you can produce a completely static website with it - not to mention that there is a very large community to learn and lean on if you get stuck.
OP here. Perhaps check Nue [1] — a static site generator I'm working on full-time. It offers some unique feats like universal hot-reloading of content, style, layout, and reactive components.
It does what I need. Fast, search-capable, markdown, and handlebars. The community isn't huge, but it's just what I need to get a little bit of writing online.
Hugo is popular and easy, and I hear Jekyll is a little out of style, but Gatsby and Astro are good. My own blog uses Hugo off-the-shelf with a semi-custom theme, and it works great. This is all hosted on a $4/month VPS with nginx (allowing me to add some custom code or other things if I want to), and has cloudflare in front of it. I hear cloudflare pages and GitHub pages are pretty popular for hosting, though.
I am leaning towards using omg.lol weblog. Not self hosted, 20 bucks a year, but it has git versioning, looks nice and comes with a lot of other interesting features in the package.
Its not hot but Jekyll works fine for me. I have my own little templating program which generates a part of my site as well, and it might take over the lot at some point.
Yeah it's wild how the use case for 90% of users is "convert epub/mobi/whatever to azw3 and upload to kindle" and doing that is buried in several right click context menus... I'm comfortable doing it now but it seems as easy as having a left pane for books in my "library" and right pane for books on my device
Haven't used it in a little bit, but from memory most of my flow for this was drag and drop. Drag the source onto Calibre, then drag that to the Kindle logo up top.
Wow hadn't seen this one before. A friend had the model M13 growing up with a trackpoint and a pretty shitty right/left click in the middle of the keyboard but this looks amazing.
yeah! don’t they remember the glory days and freedom of choice to wait in a virtual line on GameSpy to download the bandwidth limited patch from version 1.4 to 1.5 only to realize they’re on 1.2 and there is no delta patch from 1.2 to 1.4 so they can either try again with the full upgrade for 1.x to 1.5 which is about 10x the download size or they can get each incremental patch from 1.2 to 1.3 to 1.4 to 1.5?
come on. there’s a distinct value these app stores add and there is a distinct value in having one for the platform.
the ONLY benefit to this future is Epic gets a larger slice. they will not “pass the benefit down” in some trickle down user freedom economy. they will shove more micro transactions and advertisements into every corner of their marketplace.
Going online to a download website and downloading what ever you want.
There has always been "app stores" if it's tucows download or filehippo or gamespy or what not.
Very few people google "simulation games" and scroll through the pages and pages of google results and go directly to a publishers website and download an exe that they run.
It's likely solve the gap of "I can't use my phone while it's wirelessly charging". With the magsafe thing you can just clunk the charger to the back of your phone and keep using it. While battery life is still crap on these (side note - I didn't hear a single thing in the presentation about battery life... yikes) people are going to be charging their phones while they use them.
I hate to be a pessimist but with them not including a charger or headphones, they're slowly moving toward no data port whatsoever
I guess my confusion is basically that: if I want to use my phone while it charges, I just plug it in with a lightning cable. I don’t need it to “wirelessly” charge if I’m having to connect something to the device anyway. It seems to be a weird 3rd option for charging.
They’re definitely getting rid of the port, maybe next year.
Consider that iPad has replaced lightning with usb-c and that having ports takes up a lot of space... I think they are just planning to phase out lightning and go port-less on the iPhone.
Sure, it has existed for several years. But I’ve yet to drive a single car that supports it. By my understanding only super expensive high-end luxury cars support it, and even then it’s hit and miss. I’ve never seen it with my own eyes.
https://www.cars.com/articles/wireless-apple-carplay-and-and... lists 2019 model cars with Wireless CarPlay. I've driven one and tried out the wireless CarPlay, and it works more or less like the wired version (no lag, as smooth as wired CarPlay AFAICT). The only major inconvenience is probably that, if you have a passenger and they want to use their phone for music, you will need to pair their phone to the car instead of just finding the wire and plugging in. Takes about 30 seconds to a minute to go through all the setup. While the cars listed are not cheap by any means, there are a few moderately optioned minivans around the same cost of some of the less expensive cars from BMW (base cost around $38K USD).
They even tried to blame Apple for this, only to have their lie publicly called out by Apple. This created such outrage that the decision had to be reversed, but for me that's enough - they showed their true colors and are very likely to come up with further crap in the future.
I agree that it was ridiculous and to be on guard for these shenanigans. 100%.
Today though, BMW is not charging a “subscription” fee and much more importantly, all of their iDrive data is provided for free with free software updates. And yes, competitive pressure probably forced them to, but it is much better than just 5 or 6 years ago where you were charged for yearly map updates by buying a DVD. They are also the first car manufacturer to support the CarKey feature so they have changed (for now anyways).
Two advantages: (1) the Lightning port can wear out if used often, but the magnets won't; (2) you can attach and remove the phone from a magnetic charger with one hand and without looking / in the dark.
I have not had an iphone come in with a worn lighting port. 10/10 times it has been extremely packed pocket lint preventing the cable from seating correctly.
I've had that problem, but I've also had the cable clips in the sides of the socket lose some of their grip over time. They're spring steel, but even spring steel is still somewhat subject to plastic deformation with enough cycles.
It's never gotten bad enough to be a problem with mine, but I'm still happier to be using magnetic charging cables most of the time. That's primarily for the convenience of it, which is significant, but I don't mind that they also preserve the connector.
(They're especially convenient in the car. I have an SE, but even with a phone that supported inductive charging, I suspect I'd stick with the magnetic-mount-and-cable arrangement - it's exactly as convenient as inductive charging, with no risk of compromise on the strength of the mount in order to get one with half a transformer in it.)
The lightning port can essentially loosen over time, meaning the “snap” of the cable grips less and the plug can become susceptible to falling out. This has happened to me, even as someone who takes good care of his phone.
Even on very old very carelessly used phones I have not seen this. Every single time the lightning cable does not snap into place, it's some packed lint that is the problem. It can be removed with some care and it works fine after that.
If the wireless charging mechanism is solid state, it’s immune from mechanical wear.
Mechanical wear matters for example if you have a Roku, and the buttons in the remote control physically wear out. You can just instead use your phone app to control it over WiFi, and the WiFi antenna will “never” wear out because it’s solid state. Source: I have an old Roku
It's a good rule of thumb, but that doesn't check out in practice.
The wireless charging mechanism, while solid state, generates a lot of heat, which has the potential to degrade the battery especially in certain climates.
Solid state devices can still fail from mechanical stress. Heat cycling and strong magnetic fields could be a problem for wireless charging even if they don’t need to be. The core issue is generally trying to use the cheapest solution, not just mechanical stress.
Ethernet connectors are probably the best example of this, for servers that might be moved every few years their cheap and maintain a solid connection. It’s really desktops and especially laptops where they become such a major issue.
I’m struggling to understand your point. Phones are closer to laptops in that in typical use a wired power connection is frequently plugged and unplugged, so mechanical wear is an important consideration. Why are you bringing up Ethernet on servers in this context, when as you say the pattern of use is utterly different?
I know almost nothing about wireless charging. But have fair experience with working with WiFi devices. In my lifetime, I have observed 0 cases of failure on the WiFi client mechanism, and exactly 1 case of a WiFi router failing due to hardware. Meanwhile, power plugs are the most common part I have experienced wearing out on consumer electronics. Have you experienced lots of failures of solid state electronics due to eg. hear cycling and magnetic fields?
My point was you need to design stuff for the use case and a healthy margin. Incandescent lightbulbs are perhaps the poster child for solid state devices which with a limited lifespan. You can design lightbulbs for a 100 year lifespan at the cost of efficiency and bulb brightness. Even then an incandescent bulbs lifespan is dramatically shorter if your power cycling it every 2 minutes. But eventually stuff like electromigration for example will be an issue for solid state devices. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration
When designing wireless charging the same efficiency vs lifespan tradeoffs exist. Sure, they might be fine, but don’t expect them to last 20 years or anything. Further, the mats are significantly more expensive than a cable.
PS: Connector specifications are generally a dumpster fire because nobody wants to be forced to build expensive cables. And even if the spec says X, if Y is cheaper and still mostly works then you can bet people will do Y. Failure tends take a while at which point people buy a new cable vs returning the old one etc.
On my last phone, it's precisely the part that wore out first. A local guy replaced it for about $50 and I got another year of life out of the phone before I dropped it and broke the screen. (Note, this was an iPhone 6 that I replaced about a year ago)
Sure, and for some people the part that wears out first is the third SoC capacitor.
In agreggate though, the lightning port isn't the first thing that will break, and if it breaks you can use wireless charging. Whereas if you only use wireless charging there is less redundancy and the part that actually wears out the fastest, the battery, will degrade faster due to the heat.
I think the sun will outlive the lightning port. Unless the sun explodes, in which case technically it would have ended prior to its contents hitting Earth and destroying the lightning port.
Counterpoint - I have an iPhone 6 that has exactly this problem. The cable doesn't get seated properly, so occasionally it stops charging or disconnects when attached to a computer.
The primary use case is watching a movie or listening to music with headphones. Can’t charge and listen without an extra dongle. Apples solution is BT headphone they sell but it’s a bad pattern.
I agree it is a bad pattern. Remove features from a device to force you to buy an alternative accessory. Nowhere else would anybody accept this - eg. a car that came without a steering wheel so you had to buy one.
Next they'll take the screen from the phone and force you to buy an accessory screen!
a car that came without a steering wheel so you had to buy one.
When I bought a new Ford pick-up truck in the 90's, it didn't come with a rear bumper. That was an add-on. I presume because different people will want different rear bumpers (regular, towing, something else).
When I lived in the desert, I regularly saw brand pick-up trucks without tailgates, or with various specialty ones, so I assume those are also optional.
I've used Apple phones for the last ~10 years but I have held back on AirPods as I've read a few reports from people whos AirPods have lasted ~18 months before the (non-replaceable, because Apple) battery begins to heavily degrade.
